Did Diane Sawyer Solve The Mystery of Richard Simmons?

"Sawyer was given a tour of Simmons's home thanks to his brother Lenny and sister-in-law Cathy. The home has been basically untouched since the exercise guru's death. The thing that first struck Sawyer was his giant collection of dolls. She calls it "a kind of time capsule of childhood innocence and safety.""

"Lenny says he and his brother were bullied for being chubby but also for being poor. The Simmons boys were on work scholarships at their private school growing up. "We'd have to serve the food at the cafeteria and then pick up garbage and trash while they were studying," he says. "And they would make fun of us for doing that.""

"Simmons felt unloved - for his socioeconomic status, perhaps because of a sexuality he refused to address publicly, but he mainly attributed it to his weight. Simmons turned that self-loathing into a fitness empire, empowering people to get moving and take care of their bodies. Unfortunately, when Simmons's own body began to fail him, he retreated from public life."

"Simmons's friends and family point to his deteriorating knee as the beginning of the end. "Everybody called it something different," Cathy Simmons says. "His funk, his years of solitude, his""

Richard Simmons spent his final decade in solitude inside his home, prompting Diane Sawyer to seek answers for his life story. Sawyer was granted access to the house by Simmons’s brother Lenny and sister-in-law Cathy, and she noticed a large collection of dolls that remained untouched since his death. Family members described childhood bullying tied to weight and poverty, and they said Simmons felt unloved, which he later transformed into a fitness career. As his body began to fail, friends and family linked his retreat to deteriorating health, including his knee, and described how long-standing insecurities developed into a growing fear of leaving home.

Read at Vulture